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178: “A Damn Big Dam”: Taming the Colorado River with the Hoover (or Boulder) Dam (Infrastructure pt. 1)

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Manage episode 480669236 series 2438173
Content provided by ProfGregJackson and Prof. Greg Jackson. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by ProfGregJackson and Prof. Greg Jackson or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

“I felt no distress whatever…I was perspiring freely and was as limber and helpless as a wet rag. It was an exhilarating experience.... It was then and there that I first conceived the idea of the reclamation of the desert.”

This is the story of the Hoover Dam.

A wild, precarious, and dangerous river, the Colorado tears across the American southwest’s otherwise arid and largely uninhabitable desert. Yet, if tamed, the Colorado could reclaim countless acres; it could provide sustenance and hydroelectricity for untold millions! But that’s the catch: “if.”

From a dehydrated mirage in 1849, to the outgrowth of an overwhelmed canal in the early twentieth-century Imperial Valley, this is the unlikely tale of the dreamers; government officials; a consortium of six construction companies, blandly called “Six Companies; Frank “Hurry Up Crow; and the 21,000 workers—over 100 of whom will wind up dead—who defied the odds and pushed engineering to new heights to “make the desert bloom.”

____

Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com and

HTDS is part of Audacy media network.

Interested in advertising on the History That Doesn't Suck? Contact Audacyinc.com

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  continue reading

223 episodes

Artwork
iconShare
 
Manage episode 480669236 series 2438173
Content provided by ProfGregJackson and Prof. Greg Jackson. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by ProfGregJackson and Prof. Greg Jackson or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

“I felt no distress whatever…I was perspiring freely and was as limber and helpless as a wet rag. It was an exhilarating experience.... It was then and there that I first conceived the idea of the reclamation of the desert.”

This is the story of the Hoover Dam.

A wild, precarious, and dangerous river, the Colorado tears across the American southwest’s otherwise arid and largely uninhabitable desert. Yet, if tamed, the Colorado could reclaim countless acres; it could provide sustenance and hydroelectricity for untold millions! But that’s the catch: “if.”

From a dehydrated mirage in 1849, to the outgrowth of an overwhelmed canal in the early twentieth-century Imperial Valley, this is the unlikely tale of the dreamers; government officials; a consortium of six construction companies, blandly called “Six Companies; Frank “Hurry Up Crow; and the 21,000 workers—over 100 of whom will wind up dead—who defied the odds and pushed engineering to new heights to “make the desert bloom.”

____

Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com and

HTDS is part of Audacy media network.

Interested in advertising on the History That Doesn't Suck? Contact Audacyinc.com

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  continue reading

223 episodes

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